Notable quotes: Expedition 33

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

"This world is full of wonders." -Lune

"Yet everywhere we go, we walk with death." -Maelle

Brian Cutter on the badness of pain

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p41Ir-_9E-k

1:44:30 - 1:45:46

"I guess my thought with the normativity challenge is it seems to me more plausible that basic normative principles are fundamental simpliciter. Why is pain bad? Why does having a seeming that p justify the belief that p? This feels to me like a rock-bottom fact. Why is it wrong for me to press this button? Well, 'cause it would cause Joe an electric shock. Why is it wrong to cause Joe an electric shock? Well, 'cause it would cause him lots of pain. Why is it wrong to cause lots of pain? Well, because pain is bad. Why is pain bad? I feel like this is a plausible stopping point – we've hit bedrock. We know explanation needs to end somewhere – this seems like roughly the place it's gonna end. Maybe you can go like one or two layers deeper, but something normative seems to be – like these basic bedrock principles like the badness of pain or the justificatory power of experiences and so on – these seem to be bedrock principles that when you ask why they hold, the only thing to say is: that's just how it is, we've hit bedrock, explanation ends somewhere and it ends here."

William Lane Craig on the rationality of atheists

"No one is saying that it's compelling that every rational person has to believe that God exists on the basis of the evidence. I've avoided, I think if you look at my work, trying to bludgeon opponents as Keith seems to think I do. I don't think I've ever said that atheists are irrational. What I've argued is that faith is reasonable – reasonable faith – that it's rational in view of the evidence to have faith. And I don't think I've ever denounced atheists as irrational. Now, to be sure, I think that many atheists do believe some irrational things. For example, I do think it's irrational to believe that the universe popped into being uncaused out of nothing. I think it's irrational to believe, as some atheists do, that nothing ever begins to exist. I think it's irrational to think that time is not real, as some have claimed. But I've never tried to say that my opponents in these debates or the people I'm trying to persuade are irrational."

 

Reasonable Faith Podcast, "Atheism and Theistic Hypotheses", October 11, 2021, URL = <https://www.reasonablefaith.org/media/reasonable-faith-podcast/atheism-and-theistic-hypotheses>.

 

"When I'm asked what is the most common misunderstanding about my work, I don't think that it would be about any particular argument that I offer. I think perhaps it would be that I regard these arguments as somehow rationally compelling, so that anyone who disagrees with me about them is irrational. And I've never said that."

 

YouTube, drcraigvideos, "The Biggest Misconception About My Work—Clearing the Confusion", June 27, 2025, URL = <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIEmLcDjxxQ>. 

Quotes on pain – John Green and Jordan Peterson

John Green: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTEhBL7CetU

Jordan Peterson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4DgBQ9N5qk 

"When people hear that their pain isn't real, they immediately disbelieve you because they know that their pain is real; it's the realist thing in the world." –John Green

YouTube: Mythical Kitchen, "John Green Eats His Last Meal", 10 June 2025, timestamp 29:27.

". . . actually, things do have meaning. The proof of that, the most direct proof, is pain. No one disbelieves in their pain. Descartes said "I think, therefore I am", but it's more of a religious statement, and you can derive this from many religions, that the fundamental truth is "I suffer, therefore I am." And I think the reason for that is because, I don't care what you don't have faith in. The one thing you believe in is your own pain. And pain is a form of meaning, and what alleviates pain therefore, and suffering, is also a form of meaning. And I would say that the primary religious injunction, along with telling the truth, is to do what you can to alleviate suffering. And I think the truth is actually a corollary of that, because untruth produces more suffering than truth." –Jordan Peterson

Duncan Trussell Family Hour Podcast, February 2017, reposted on YouTube by hihosilver, 06 Jul 2022, timestamp 1:22:28.

"That's why so many religions, like the Buddhist religion, insists that existence is suffering. The reason for that, it's a claim about what's irreducibly real. Everyone acts as if their pain is real. It doesn't matter what they say, it doesn't matter what kind of materialist they are or what they think about the human soul, or anything like that. When it comes right down to it, there's nothing more real than pain." –Jordan Peterson (Emphasis in bold is mine.) 

Duncan Trussell Family Hour Podcast, February 2017, reposted on YouTube by hihosilver, 06 Jul 2022, timestamp 1:45:50.

Bonus:

"One thing I've learned as a clinical psychologist is that you do not hit a target you don't aim for." –Jordan Peterson

Duncan Trussell Family Hour Podcast, February 2017, reposted on YouTube by hihosilver, 06 Jul 2022, timestamp 1:34:15.

Douglas Portmore on Philosophy and Moral Disagreement

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBq-2vpbS60

8:15 - 13:24

"Philosophy is unique as a discipline in that you do not have to accept any disciplinary assumptions or methods in order to count as doing philosophy. You can do philosophy so long as you are investigating certain questions like whether we have free will, whether there are moral facts, and you don't have to accept Rene Descartes' method of doubt or foundationalism or coherentism or X-phi or any other particular methodology to count as doing philosophy. You also don't have to accept any kind of particular assumptions, like you don't have to accept classical logic, or the law of non-contradiction, or the principle of bivalence to count as being a philosopher.

Now that's different from other disciplines. You don't count as doing science if you don't employ the scientific method. You don't count as doing science if you don't accept or assume that there's a world that exists independently of our perceiving it, a world that we can learn about via our empirical observations. And that's why we don't teach creationism in science class, and we don't look at the argument from design in science class. To count as science you have to do empirical investigation and creationism doesn't involve doing that kind of empirical work, and the argument from design for the existence of God doesn't do that kind of empirical work, so it just doesn't count as science.

Same thing with mathematics: if you don't accept Euclid's axioms and you don't accept classical logic as the method of inferring certain theorems and postulates from those axioms using classical logic, then you just don't count as doing geometry.

So philosophy is unique in that in order to count as doing philosophy you don't have to accept any particular assumptions or even particular methodology. And this is why philosophers don't converge on views in the way that scientists and mathematicians do. And this is why, with respect to philosophical disagreement, you don't have a resolution of these philosophical questions in the way that you have a resolution in mathematics and in science. . . . 

Why is there so much moral disagreement? Because we do moral inquiry via philosophical inquiry. And when we do philosophical inquiry, we are not required to start from any certain assumptions, and we are not required to follow any particular methodology. . . . 

So we've had three explanations for moral disagreement: One explanation is the disagreement is due to the fact that there are no moral facts for us to agree on. The second explanation is that although there are moral facts for us to agree upon, we fail to agree because some people are just ignorant of those facts. And then a third explanation is that the reason why there is so much moral disagreement is because moral disagreement is done in the mode of philosophical inquiry, and the nature of philosophical inquiry is such that it doesn't result in convergence on certain particular views.

I think the third is the best explanation, and to see that, notice that we don't find that there's any greater disagreement about moral issues among philosophers than there are about other philosophical questions among philosophers. So we find that the kind of disagreement we have with respect to morality is the same as the kind of disagreement we have with respect to whether there's free will . . . how to solve the mind-body problem, and so on and so forth. So it's no surprise then that we find that there's so much moral disagreement . . ."

Sharon Rawlette on antirealism

"[If antirealism were true] I don't know why I would care about ethics anymore, why I would care about being systematic about the way that I choose what things I'm going to do, or even care about having ethical debates with people. We're not talking about anything real. So you care about people in this difficult situation and I don't, and that's as far as we can go."

 

80,000 hours podcast #138, 14m. (Classic Episode)

 

"It's not that the goodness or badness of this state [of happiness or pain] supervenes on it, but that intrinsic goodness is a qualitative state, so it's something that you can observe and experience yourself. If we didn't ever experience pleasure or pain, we wouldn't have the concept of intrinsic goodness that we do in fact have and use when making moral decisions. When we experience pleasure or pain, what we experience is something that justifies the desire or justifies avoiding a certain thing. In the book I talk about the feeling of ought-to-be-ness. When you feel pleasure, you're like 'Oh, this is why life is worth living. This is what we're here for. This is worth having.' And when you're experiencing suffering, you're experience something that – if this were all there was to existence, it would be better to be dead." (19-20m)

 

"How do we even have a concept of moral facts? We have it through these experiences. We can experience their value or their disvalue. How can we experience the truth or falsity of moral facts? We can directly experience intrinsic goodness or intrinsic badness, that's something directly present to our consciousness, and then from there we can use the information that we have about the world that we live in to determine which other things are instrumentally good and bad because of the way they produce this conscious experience." (21m)

 

"I think that that's generally true [that you cannot derive an ought from an is], that's true for every kind of fact about the world except in these particular experiences of pleasure and pain – I think we see that those two categories come together. You can't describe what it is for an experience to be pleasure without talking about its goodness. It wouldn't be pleasure if it wasn't good! And pain would not be pain if it wasn't bad." (22-23m)

Does choosing death entail maximal suffering?

In other posts I've argued that suffering-at-capacity aka max suffering (or maxed out suffering) aka unbearable suffering is logically incompatible with a loving God. Suicide entails suffering-at-capacity. Thus, suicide entails there is no loving God.

But is it true that suicide entails unbearable suffering?

It seems like my own views say no, because I believe that some people can die happy, and can even die happy by choice. I think an example of this is Jesus, who willingly goes to his own death. But Jesus can die happy, knowing that he will survive his death and knowing that his death is for the salvation of the lucky elect (or, under universal reconciliation, for everyone).

Socrates is another example. He takes his own life, but he seems to do so with a kind of satisfaction, knowing that either he will be favorably judged by gods in the afterlife, seeing as he is a philosopher who has strived to cultivate virtue, or death is a peaceful sleep. Either way, there is nothing to worry about. Socrates dies peacefully, despite the fact he dies by suicide; no unbearable suffering in sight.

First, here is a similar puzzle: If someone sees that they will be crucified on a cross in the near future, and takes their life to prevent what would be unbearable suffering, then isn't this a case of suicide implying a lack of unbearable suffering?

My response: Dread itself can cause unbearable suffering. If you want to know whether someone is suffering unbearably, look no farther than signs that life is not worth living for them. So if someone takes their life, it must be the case that living has become unbearable by something. In the case above, it's dread that is the source of the person taking their life, and thus it is dread that is the cause of unbearable suffering.

So how do I respond to the case of Jesus, or Socrates?

One option (and these options need not be mutually exclusive) is to say that no one can really die happy; everyone wants to live. Consider what Diotima says in the Symposium:

“Now, then,” she said. “Can we simply say that people love the good?”

“Yes,” I said.

“But shouldn’t we add that, in loving it, they want the good to be theirs?”

“We should.”

“And not only that,” she said. “They want the good to be theirs forever, don’t they?”

“We should add that too.”

“In a word, then, love is wanting to possess the good forever.”

“That’s very true,” I said. (206; pg 519)

Which reminds me of something Nietzsche said:

"Oh man! Take heed of what the dark midnight says: I slept, I slept—from deep dreams I awoke: The world is deep—and more profound than day would have thought. Profound in her pain—Pleasure—more profound than pain of heart, Woe speaks; pass on. But all pleasure seeks eternity—a deep and profound eternity." (Schaeffer, Francis. How Should We Then Live? Translated by Udo Middelmann. Fleming H. Revell Company, 1976, pg 169.)

We then must speak of dying relatively happy. Some deaths are more miserable than others, and we should strive to have the least miserable death we can.

A key to dying well is to write down a bucket list, a set of things you'd like to do while you can, and to then prioritize them. Take the single most important achievement on that list and turn it into an action plan. And that there becomes your life, for the time being at least. If you do this accurately enough, and if you are lucky enough to succeed, and if you don't happen to change your mind such that the achievement in question no longer interests you, then you will achieve a pretty good sense of satisfaction with yourself and your life; you accomplished the essential task you set out to accomplish; you slayed your dragon.

So when we talk about dying happy, we are talking about something relative and not absolute. Obviously, if an old, accomplished person had the chance to live another life, or to be young again and free, they'd take that over death most of the time. But we don't get the option. So you have to psychologically adapt to what you're stuck with.

Another option is to say that Socrates did in fact suffer unbearably. 

Another option is to say that being able to die happy is exactly what causes unbearable suffering. If someone is able to die happy, then they probably have achieved some sense of existential completion; something of a self-actualization, or maybe even a psychological state beyond self-actualization. Whatever it is, it's the peak of psychological achievement; a kind of bliss or nirvana or enlightenment. But if someone has achieved such a state, then you can see how continued living could become unbearable for this kind of person. To live further would be pointless, and indeed it may be impossible to live without some kind of pursuit on which to live, a pursuit that betrays desire or need, when the person who is existentially complete has no desire or need, and thus has no pursuits, and thus has no basis on which to live. Living itself becomes unbearable for such a person. So far from the ability to die happy contradicting the idea that self-death entails unbearable suffering, it actually can entail it.

So I can have it both ways: self-death always entails unbearable suffering, and yet someone can die happy while choosing to die. But how can such deep peace be compatible with such deep suffering?

Another option is simply to say that not all suicides entail unbearable suffering, but some of them do. Even if just a single suicide entails unbearable suffering, that's enough for my argument against God.

The problem of different kinds of unbearable suffering:

Let's say someone achieves existential completion and can die happy. Because of this, they find life unbearable and so they choose their own death. Here's the problem: We now have two entirely separate kinds of unbearable suffering. The first kind is the suffering of being existentially incomplete. The second kind is living without a basis on which to live.

For the kind of person under question, the greater suffering between the two is obviously being existentially incomplete. Because, after all, why wouldn't this person just choose to die before accomplishing their great task? If they're going to choose death anyway, why not save themselves the trouble? The answer: because the thought of dying before accomplishing the great task is unbearable. And yet the thought of dying is no longer unbearable after the task has been accomplished, and indeed the thought of living becomes unbearable.

So now we have two kinds of unbearable suffering:

(1) Die before becoming existentially complete.

(2) Live while existentially complete.

Which one is worse? Surely, the first one is worse. And yet, death is not a conscious harm. And only conscious harms can be the worst harms. If suffering in general ultimately cashes out in terms of consciousness, then the worst suffering cashes out in terms of consciousness. But if we allow depriving evils to cash out in terms of consciousness via the theoretical conscious comparison between the positive goods and a lack thereof, then don't we allow depriving evils, and thus unconscious harms, to be the worst of sufferings? This would lead to a contradiction on my part.

Response: Being deprived of paradise is bad for the one deprived, but not as bad as being sent to hell. We know that being deprived of paradise is bad the same way we know being sent to hell is bad: by the test of direct awareness. We can be certain that one experience is better than another (or better than a lack) by comparing the two in our minds. If one of the experiences is not actual but probable, then we still have probabilistic justification for believing that one experience is better than another.

The person directly aware of their happiness in paradise is aware that being deprived of paradise would make them infinitely worse off. But this doesn't mean that deprivational evils are as bad as positive evils of the same magnitude. This is an asymmetry between max depriving evils and max extrinsic evils, and between max saving goods and max extrinsic goods. Being saved from hell is a max saving good. Being sent to heaven is a max extrinsic good. The latter includes the former, but then also includes infinitely more goodness. So extrinsic goods / evils are always greater than saving goods / depriving evils of the same "rank", at least when maxed, because max extrinsic goods / evils always include max saving goods / depriving evils. (Maybe unmaxed evils and goods are sometimes, or always, incommensurable and cannot be held at the same rank.)

So the worst of suffering and the best of flourishing still must be intrinsic and not merely depriving or saving. So technically the best possible good with respect to someone suffering in hell is to send them to heaven, and not merely to snuff them out of existence. But both the sending and the snuffing are in fact maximal goods, it's just that one is greater.

But how can you have two max goods with one being greater than the other? Likewise, how can max suffering be considered maxed when we can imagine a worse suffering? If (2) is an unbearable suffering, and yet (1) is worse, then (2) isn't really a max evil. This would mean that suicide doesn't entail max suffering.

Response: Think of unbearable suffering as suffering that surpasses a threshold. Different sufferings can surpass that threshold to different degrees. So if I have a bank account with $100 in it, I can overdraft it by spending $101 or by spending $1,000. If one's capacity for suffering is overdrafted, then one experiences unbearable suffering, no matter the degree of the overdraft.

This means that some max sufferings are worse than other max sufferings. This makes sense, for God could always enhance our minds so that we could suffer in deeper and more profound ways, and then torture us with our new heightened capacities for suffering. These heightened max sufferings are worse than our current max sufferings.

But max suffering is relative to the individual's capacity. And saving goods are relative to the suffering. So no matter how simple the creature, their suffering-at-capacity produces a good of being saved from that suffering, and it's hard to imagine what goods God has in mind that are supposedly greater than these saving goods.

To die happy then is to die without a specific kind of suffering – the suffering of feeling unfinished in one's life, and to die with a specific kind of happiness – the happiness of feeling that one's life is complete. But it's entirely compatible to have one kind of happiness amid outweighing pains such that one dies with one kind of happiness, peace, and yet also with unbearable suffering. The mistake is in thinking that necessarily happiness and pain eliminate each other and cannot co-exist, or in thinking that specifically contentment cannot survive along with suffering, as suffering implies discontent. But one can be content in certain respects while discontent in others, just as one can be happy with some things while unhappy with others. No one is truly happy, because to be truly happy would be to plainly ignore the failings of this world and the plights of others.

Logos, Pathos, Ethos

"Among Aristotle's contributions in [rhetoric] was a theory of persuasion, which famously contained the idea that there are three modes by which a speaker may persuade an audience. Paraphrasing very loosely, Aristotle's idea was that we can be persuaded, first of all, by a speaker's personal attributes, including such things as his or her background, reputation, accomplishments, expertise, and similar things. Aristotle referred to this mode of persuasion as ethos. Second, a speaker can persuade us by connecting with us on a personal level, and by arousing and appealing to our emotions by a skillful use of rhetoric. This mode of persuasion Aristotle termed pathos. And third, the speaker may persuade us by using information and arguments—what he called logos. Unfortunately, logos—rational argumentation—is one of the least effective ways of winning someone to your point of view. . . . People notoriously are unfazed by good arguments while finding even the worst arguments compelling."

-Critical Thinking, 10th ed. Brooke Moore & Richard Parker, 48-49

Socrates on skepticism of argument, Phaedo, 90

"It would be pitiable, Phaedo, he said, when there is a true and reliable argument and one that can be understood, if a man who has dealt with such arguments as appear at one time true, at another time untrue, should not blame himself or his own lack of skill but, because of his distress, in the end gladly shift the blame away from himself to the arguments, and spend the rest of his life hating and reviling reasonable discussion and so be deprived of truth and knowledge of reality."

"Yes, by Zeus", I said, "that would be pitiable indeed."

"This then is the first thing we should guard against, he said. We should not allow into our minds the conviction that argumentation has nothing sound about it; much rather we should believe that it is we who are not yet sound and that we must take courage and be eager to attain soundness, you and the others for the sake of your whole life still to come, and I for the sake of death itself."

Socrates, Phaedo, 82 - 83

"The lovers of learning know that when philosophy gets hold of their soul, it is imprisoned in and clinging to the body, and that it is forced to examine other things through it as through a cage and not by itself, and that it wallows in every kind of ignorance.

Philosophy sees that the worst feature of this imprisonment is that it is due to desires, so that the prisoner himself is contributing to his own incarceration most of all.

As I say, the lovers of learning know that philosophy gets hold of their soul when it is in that state, then gently encourages it and tries to free it by showing them that investigation through the eyes is full of deceit, as is that through the ears and the other senses. Philosophy then persuades the soul to withdraw from the senses in so far as it is not compelled to use them and bids the soul to gather itself together by itself, to trust only itself and whatever reality, existing by itself, the soul by itself understands, and not to consider as true whatever it examines by other means, for this is different in different circumstances and is sensible and visible, whereas what the soul itself sees is intelligible and invisible. 

The soul of the true philosopher thinks that this deliverance must not be opposed and so keeps away from pleasures and desires and pains as far as he can; he reflects that violent pleasure or pain or passion does not cause merely such evils as one might expect, such as one suffers when one has been sick or extravagant through desire, but the greatest and most extreme evil, though one does not reflect on this."

"What is that, Socrates?", asked Cebes.

"That the soul of every man, when it feels violent pleasure or pain in connection with some object, inevitably believes at the same time that what causes such feelings must be very clear and very true, which it is not."

Socrates and Protagoras on moral responsibility and motivation

From "Protagoras" in the Complete Works of Plato (with section letters removed):

345

. . . For Simonides was not so uneducated as to say that he praised all who did nothing bad willingly, as if there were anyone who willingly did bad things. I am pretty sure that none of the wise men thinks that any human being willingly makes a mistake or willingly does anything wrong or bad. They know very well that anyone who does anything wrong or bad does so involuntarily. . . .

351

. . . “Would you say, Protagoras, that some people live well and others live badly?”

“Yes.”

“But does it seem to you that a person lives well, if he lives distressed and in pain?”

“No, indeed.”

“Now, if he completed his life, having lived pleasantly, does he not seem to you to have lived well?”

“It seems that way to me.”

“So, then, to live pleasantly is good, and unpleasantly, bad?”

“Yes, so long as he lived having taken pleasure in honorable things.”

“What, Protagoras? Surely you don’t, like most people, call some pleasant things bad and some painful things good? I mean, isn’t a pleasant thing good just insofar as it is pleasant, that is, if it results in nothing other than pleasure; and, on the other hand, aren’t painful things bad in the same way, just insofar as they are painful?”

“I don’t know, Socrates, if I should answer as simply as you put the question—that everything pleasant is good and everything painful is bad. It seems to me to be safer to respond not merely with my present answer in mind but from the point of view of my life overall, that on the one hand, there are pleasurable things which are not good, and on the other hand, there are painful things which are not bad but some which are, and a third class which is neutral—neither bad nor good.”

“You call pleasant things those which partake of pleasure or produce pleasure?”

“Certainly.”

“So my question is this: Just insofar as things are pleasurable are they good? I am asking whether pleasure itself is not a good.”

“Just as you always say, Socrates, let us inquire into this matter, and if your claim seems reasonable and it is established that pleasure and the good are the same, then we will come to agreement; otherwise we will disagree.” 

“Do you wish to lead this inquiry, or shall I?”

“It is fitting for you to lead, for it is you who brought up the idea.”

“All right, will this help to make it clear? When someone evaluates a 

352

man‘s health or other functions of the body through his appearance, he looks at the face and extremities, and might say: ‘Show me your chest and back too, so that I can make a better examination.’ That’s the kind of investigation I want to make. Having seen how you stand on the good and the pleasant, I need to say something like this to you: Come now, Protagoras, and reveal this about your mind: What do you think about knowledge? Do you go along with the majority or not? Most people think this way about it, that it is not a powerful thing, neither a leader nor a ruler. They do not think of it in that way at all; but rather in this way: while knowledge is often present in a man, what rules him is not knowledge but rather anything else—sometimes anger, sometimes pleasure, sometimes pain, at other times love, often fear; they think of his knowledge as being utterly dragged around by all these other things as if it were a slave. Now, does the matter seem like that to you, or does it seem to you that knowledge is a fine thing capable of ruling a person, and if someone were to know what is good and bad, then he would not be forced by anything to act otherwise than knowledge dictates, and intelligence would be sufficient to save a person?”

“Not only does it seem just as you say, Socrates, but further, it would be shameful indeed for me above all people to say that wisdom and knowledge are anything but the most powerful forces in human activity.”

“Right you are. You realize that most people aren’t going to be convinced by us. They maintain that most people are unwilling to do what is best, even though they know what it is and are able to do it. And when I have asked them the reason for this, they say that those who act that way do so because they are overcome by pleasure or pain or are being ruled by one of the things I referred to just now.”

“I think people say a lot of other things erroneously too, Socrates.”

353 

“Come with me, then, and let’s try to persuade people and to teach them what is this experience which they call being overcome by pleasure, because of which they fail to do the best thing when they know what it is. For perhaps if we told them that what they were saying isn’t true, but is demonstrably false, they would ask us: ‘Protagoras and Socrates, if this is not the experience of being overcome by pleasure, but something other than that, what do you two say it is? Tell us.’ ”

“Socrates, why is it necessary for us to investigate the opinion of ordinary people, who will say whatever occurs to them?”

“I think this will help us find out about courage, how it is related to the other parts of virtue. If you are willing to go along with what we agreed just now, that I will lead us toward what I think will turn out to
be the best way to make things clear, then fine; if you are not willing, I will give it up.”

“No, you are right; proceed as you have begun.”

“Going back, then; if they should ask us: ‘We have been speaking of “being overcome by pleasure.” What do you say this is?’ I would reply to them this way: ‘Listen. Protagoras and I will try to explain it to you. Do you hold, gentlemen, that this happens to you in circumstances like these—you are often overcome by pleasant things like food or drink or sex, and you do those things all the while knowing they are ruinous?’ They would say yes. Then you and I would ask them again: ‘In what sense do you call these things ruinous? Is it that each of them is pleasant in itself and produces immediate pleasure, or is it that later they bring about diseases and poverty and many other things of that sort? Or even if it doesn’t bring about these things later, but gives only enjoyment, would it still be a bad thing, just because it gives enjoyment in whatever way?’ Can we suppose then, Protagoras, that they would make any other answer than that bad things are bad not because they bring about immediate pleasure, but rather because of what happens later, disease and things like that?”

“I think that is how most people would answer.”

“ ‘And in bringing about diseases and poverty, do they bring about pain?’ I think they would agree.”

“Yes.”

“ ‘Does it not seem to you, my good people, as Protagoras and I maintain, that these things are bad on account of nothing other than the fact that 

354

they result in pain and deprive us of other pleasures?’ Would they agree?”

Protagoras concurred.

“Then again, suppose we were to ask them the opposite question: ‘You who say that some painful things are good, do you not say that such things as athletics and military training and treatments by doctors such as cautery, surgery, medicines, and starvation diet are good things even though painful?’ Would they say so?”

“Yes.”

“ ‘Would you call these things good for the reason that they bring about intense pain and suffering, or because they ultimately bring about health and good condition of bodies and preservation of cities and power over others and wealth?’ Would they agree?”

“Yes.”

“ ‘These things are good only because they result in pleasure and in the relief and avoidance of pain? Or do you have some other criterion in view, other than pleasure and pain, on the basis of which you would call these things good?’ They say no, I think.”

“And I would agree with you.”

“ ‘So then you pursue pleasure as being good and avoid pain as bad?’ ”

“Yes.”

“ ‘So this you regard as bad, pain, and pleasure, you regard as good, since you call the very enjoying of something bad whenever it deprives us of greater pleasures than it itself provides, or brings about greater pains than the very pleasures inherent in it? But if you call the very enjoying of something bad for some other reason and with some other criterion in view than the one I have suggested, you could tell us what it is; but you won’t be able to.’ ”

“I don’t think they’ll be able to either.”

“ ‘And likewise concerning the actual state of being in pain? Do you call the actual condition of being in pain good, whenever it relieves pains greater than the ones it contains or brings about greater pleasures than its attendant pains? Now, if you are using some other criterion than the one I have suggested, when you call the very condition of being pained good, you can tell us what it is; but you won’t be able to.’ ”

“Truly spoken.”

“Now, again, gentlemen, if you asked me: ‘Why are you going on so much about this and in so much detail?’ I would reply, forgive me. First of all, it is not easy to show what it is that you call ‘being overcome by

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pleasure,’ and then, it is upon this very point that all the arguments rest. But even now it is still possible to withdraw, if you are able to say that the good is anything other than pleasure or that the bad is anything other than pain. Or is it enough for you to live life pleasantly without pain? If it is enough, and you are not able to say anything else than that the good and the bad are that which result in pleasure and pain, listen to this. For I say to you that if this is so, your position will become absurd, when you say that frequently a man, knowing the bad to be bad, nevertheless does that very thing, when he is able not to do it, having been driven and overwhelmed by pleasure; and again when you say that a man knowing the good is not willing to do it, on account of immediate pleasure, having been overcome by it. Just how absurd this is will become very clear, if we do not use so many names at the same time, ‘pleasant’ and ‘painful,’ ‘good’ and ‘bad’; but since these turned out to be only two things, let us instead call them by two names, first, ‘good’ and ‘bad,’ then later, ‘pleasant’ and ‘painful.’ On that basis, then, let us say that a man knowing bad things to be bad, does them all the same. If then someone asks us: ‘Why?’ ‘Having been overcome,’ we shall reply. ‘By what?’ he will ask us. We are no longer able to say ‘by pleasure,’—for it has taken on its other name, ‘the good’ instead of ‘pleasure’—so we will say and reply that ‘he is overcome . . .’‘By what?’ he will ask. ‘By the good,’ we will say, ‘for heaven’s sake!’ If by chance the questioner is rude he might burst out laughing and say: ‘What you’re saying is ridiculous—someone does what is bad, knowing that it is bad, when it is not necessary to do it, having been overcome by the good. So,’ he will say, ‘within yourself, does the good outweigh the bad or not?’ We will clearly say in reply that it does not; for if it did, the person who we say is overcome by pleasure would not have made any mistake. ‘In virtue of what,’ he might say, ‘does the good outweigh the bad or the bad the good? Only in that one is greater and one is smaller, or more and less.’ We could not help but agree. ‘So clearly then’ he will say, ‘by “being overcome” you mean getting more bad things for the sake of fewer good things.’

That settles that, then.

“So let’s now go back and apply the names ‘the pleasant’ and ‘the painful’ to these very same things. Now let us say that a man does what before we called ‘bad’things and now shall call ‘painful’ ones, knowing they are painful 

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things, but being overcome by pleasant things, although it is clear that they do not outweigh them. But how else does pleasure outweigh pain, except in relative excess or deficiency? Isn’t it a matter (to use other terms) of larger and smaller, more or fewer, greater or lesser degree? 

“For if someone were to say: ‘But Socrates, the immediate pleasure is very much different from the pleasant and the painful at a later time,’ I would reply, ‘They are not different in any other way than by pleasure and pain, for there is no other way that they could differ. Weighing is a good analogy; you put the pleasures together and the pains together, both the near and the remote, on the balance scale, and then say which of the two is more. For if you weigh pleasant things against pleasant, the greater and the more must always be taken; if painful things against painful, the fewer and the smaller. And if you weigh pleasant things against painful, and the painful is exceeded by the pleasant—whether the near by the remote or the remote by the near—you have to perform that action in which the pleasant prevails; on the other hand, if the pleasant is exceeded by the painful, you have to refrain from doing that. Does it seem any different to you, my friends?’ I know that they would not say otherwise.”

Protagoras assented.

“Since this is so, I will say to them: ‘Answer me this: Do things of the same size appear to you larger when seen near at hand and smaller when seen from a distance, or not?’ They would say they do. ‘And similarly for thicknesses and pluralities? And equal sounds seem louder when near at hand, softer when farther away?’ They would agree. ‘If then our well-being depended upon this, doing and choosing large things, avoiding and not doing the small ones, what would we see as our salvation in life? Would it be the art of measurement or the power of appearance? While the power of appearance often makes us wander all over the place in confusion, often changing our minds about the same things and regretting our actions and choices with respect to things large and small, the art of measurement in contrast, would make the appearances lose their power by showing us the truth, would give us peace of mind firmly rooted in the truth and would save our life.’ Therefore, would these men agree, with this in mind, that the art of measurement would save us, or some other art?”

“I agree, the art of measurement would.”

“What if our salvation in life depended on our choices of odd and even, when the greater and the lesser had to be counted correctly, either the same kind against itself or one kind against the other, whether it be near or remote?

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What then would save our life? Surely nothing other than knowledge, specifically some kind of measurement, since that is the art of the greater and the lesser? In fact, nothing other than arithmetic, since it’s a question of the odd and even? Would these men agree with us or not?”

Protagoras thought they would agree.

“Well, then, my good people: Since it has turned out that our salvation in life depends on the right choice of pleasures and pains, be they more or fewer, greater or lesser, farther or nearer, doesn’t our salvation seem, first of all, to be measurement, which is the study of relative excess and deficiency and equality?”

“It must be.”

“And since it is measurement, it must definitely be an art, and knowledge.”

“They will agree.”

“What exactly this art, this knowledge is, we can inquire into later; that it is knowledge of some sort is enough for the demonstration which Protagoras and I have to give in order to answer the question you asked us. You asked it, if you remember, when we were agreeing that nothing was stronger or better than knowledge, which always prevails, whenever it is present, over pleasure and everything else. At that point you said that pleasure often rules even the man who knows; since we disagreed, you went on to ask us this: ‘Protagoras and Socrates, if this experience is not d being overcome by pleasure, what is it then; what do you say it is? Tell us.’ If immediately we had said to you ‘ignorance,’ you might have laughed at us, but if you laugh at us now, you will be laughing at yourselves. For you agreed with us that those who make mistakes with regard to the choice of pleasure and pain, in other words, with regard to good and bad, do so because of a lack of knowledge, and not merely a lack of knowledge but a lack of that knowledge you agreed was measurement. And the mistaken act done without knowledge you must know is one done from ignorance. . . .”

Jaegwon Kim on philosophy

"We shouldn't do philosophy by first deciding what conclusions we want to prove, or what aims we want to realize, and then posit convenient entities and premises to get us where we want to go."

-Jaegwon Kim, "Lonely Souls"

Alcibiades and Socrates on the soul

Plato Complete Works, Benjamin Jowett, Alcibiades I, 50/3045 - 52/3045

"Socrates: And does not a man use the whole body?

Alcibiades: Certainly.

Socrates: And that which uses is different from that which is used?

Alcibiades: True.

Socrates: Then a man is not the same as his own body?

Alcibiades: That is the inference.

Socrates: What is he, then?

Alcibiades: I cannot say.

Socrates: Nay, you can say that he is the user of the body.

Alcibiades: Yes.

Socrates: And the user of the body is the soul?

Alcibiades: Yes, the soul.

Socrates: And the soul rules?

Alcibiades: Yes.

Socrates: Let me make an assertion which will, I think, be universally admitted.

Alcibiades: What is it?

Socrates: That man is one of three things.

Alcibiades: What are they?

Socrates: Soul, body, or both together forming a whole.

Alcibiades: Certainly.

Socrates: But did we not say that the actual ruling principle of the body is man?

Alcibiades: Yes, we did.

Socrates: And does the body rule over itself?

Alcibiades: Certainly not.

Socrates: It is subject, as we were saying?

Alcibiades: Yes.

Socrates: Then that is not the principle which we are seeking?

Alcibiades: It would seem not.

Socrates: But may we say that the union of the two rules over the body, and consequently that this is man?

Alcibiades: Very likely.

Socrates: The most unlikely of all things; for if one of the members is subject, the two united cannot possibly rule.

[WRM Lamb translation (130c): "The unlikeliest thing in the world: for if one of the two does not share in the rule, it is quite inconceivable that the combination of the two can be ruling."]

Alcibiades: True.

Socrates: But since neither the body, nor the union of the two, is man, either man has no real existence, or the soul is man?

Alcibiades: Just so.

Socrates: Is anything more required to prove that the soul is man?

Alcibiades: Certainly not; the proof is, I think, quite sufficient.

Socrates: And if the proof, although not perfect, be sufficient, we shall be satisfied;—more precise proof will be supplied when we have discovered that which we were led to omit, from a fear that the enquiry would be too much protracted.

Alcibiades: What was that?

Socrates: What I meant, when I said absolute existence must first be considered; but now, instead of absolute existence, we have been considering the nature of individual existence, and this may, perhaps, be sufficient; for surely there is nothing which may be called more properly ourselves than the soul?

Alcibiades: There is nothing.

Socrates: Then we may truly conceive that you and I are conversing with one another, soul to soul?

Alcibiades: Very true."

Notable Quotes: Plato on being an expert

 ". . . yet in a case where you set up to have knowledge and are ready to stand up and advise as though you knew, are you not ashamed to be unable, as appears, to answer a question upon it?"

-Socrates, Alcibiades I 108e - 109a

From: Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vol. 8 translated by W.R.M. Lamb. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1955. URL: https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0176%3Atext%3DAlc.%201%3Asection%3D109a

And so to be a philosopher is to ask yourself endless questions, poking and prodding your own views, to see that they stand up to scrutiny. A single smart question is all it takes to bring down a theory, or at least cast it in doubt. So one of the great challenges of philosophy is to anticipate all smart questions against your theories and have ready answers to them. 

Notable Quotes: Plato's Alcibiades – Justice vs Expediency

From a deontic point of view, justice involves the administering of just deserts – folks getting what they deserve. Justice is about fairness and equality. Good things ought to happen to people who do good, and bad things ought to happen to those who do wrong. Justice is a mysterious karmic demand that needs to be satisfied, like a god needing oblation.

From a consequentialist point of view, no one deserves anything in any sense other than a consequentialist sense. There are no mysterious karmic demands or gods needing to be appeased.

In the parable of the talents, a master gives his servants large amounts of money (The NIV version uses 'bags of gold'). The servants are judged based on the consequences of their uses of the money (they are judged too by their virtue, but consequence drives virtue: the virtuous person aims for good consequences). One of the servants misuses the money, and the master wishes he (the master) had given that money to the other servant who was a good steward of resources.

This is a consequentialist sense of deserving. A person deserves a good if that good maximizes flourishing in their hands and not in the hands of another.

We often feel that an injustice has occurred if someone works hard, is talented, and has a good heart, but never receives any reward. Conversely, someone who cheats their way to the top deserves none of the promotions they receive. I think we'll find that we feel this way for consequentialist reasons. It's intrinsically difficult to be motivated to work hard. The promise of reward enables the motivation. So if we observe people working hard and getting nothing out of it, then we will be demotivated from working hard, which will have poor consequences. If we observe people getting rewarded for cheating their way to the top, then that will motivate us to do the same, which will likewise, in the long run at least, lead to poor consequences.

So a consequentialist notion of justice can involve a consequentialist notion of just deserts. But there's another definition of justice I like: Justice has been achieved when there is a direct correlation between virtue and power. Justice has failed when there is a direct correlation between vice and power. This definition is compatible with the first, because when virtuous people have power, total flourishing is maximized, and when evil people have power, total flourishing is minimized.

Justice can be used to refer to a state of affairs, or to a process. Thus, justice is the process of establishing a direct correlation between virtue and power, or of breaking the connection between vice and power. We can replace 'virtue' with 'truth', 'vice' with 'falsehood', and 'power' with 'survival'; justice has been achieved when truth prevails and when falsehoods die, not because some magical debt has been settled, but because truth leads to flourishing and falsehoods lead to misery.

Anyway, the point of all that is to say that Plato saw this many years ago (though apparently the authorship of Alcibiades is disputed):

"But, Socrates, I think that the Athenians and the rest of the Hellenes do not often advise as to the more just or unjust; for they see no difficulty in them, and therefore they leave them, and consider which course of action will be most expedient; for there is a difference between justice and expediency. Many person have done great wrong and profited by their injustice; others have done rightly and come to no good."

-Alcibiades, Alcibiades I

From Plato Complete Works, Benjamin Jowett and George Burges translation

Notable quotes: Epicurus on good and evil

Setting comments about death aside, it turns out my notion of goodness and evil depending on consciousness is Epicurean:

"Accustom yourself to believe that death is nothing to us, for good and evil imply awareness, and death is the privation of all awareness; therefore a right understanding that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not by adding to life an unlimited time, but by taking away the yearning after immortality."

Translated by Robert Drew Hicks.

Source: https://classics.mit.edu/Epicurus/menoec.html

Notable quotes: Aristotle on praise and blame

Turns out that what I have been calling critical blame is Aristotelian:  

"Fine things are the objects of praise, base things of blame; and at the head of the fine stand the virtues, at the head of the base the vices; consequently the virtues are objects of praise, and also the causes of the virtues are objects of praise, and the things that accompany the virtues and that result from them, and their works, while the opposite are the objects of blame."

Aristotle, On Virtues and Vices

Note: According to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Virtues_and_Vices, Aristotle may not be the original author.

Notable quotes: Brennan Lee Mulligan

"Have you ever tried to write? It's the saddest, hardest, worst thing in the world."

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/SwZaf1riarQ

Notable quotes: Kant on philosophy

Section 381, page 83 of Jonathan Bennett (https://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/kant1783.pdf):

“Mathematics, natural science, law, arts, even morals etc., don’t completely fill the soul; there’s always a space staked out for pure, speculative reason. The emptiness of this space prompts us to resort to grotesque masks and worthless glitter, or to mysticism, ostensibly in search of employment and entertainment though really we are just distracting ourselves so as to drown out the burdensome voice of reason, which, true to its own nature, demands something that can satisfy it, and not merely something that started up so as to serve other ends or to satisfy our inclinations. So a study that is concentrated on •this territory of reason existing for itself must (or so I have reason to hope) have a great attraction for anyone who has tried in this way to stretch his thought, because it is just precisely •here that all other kinds of knowledge—all other goals, even—must come together and unite into a whole.”

Notable quotes: William James

"There is but one indefectibly certain truth . . . that the present phenomenon of consciousness exists." ("Will to Believe", 1896)